Halo: Forerunner of Mercy
by NH3
Summary: Five months after the final act of Flood of Regret, the Predicted Miracle has been fixed. Now, the Arbiter, Maven, and the Master Chief are ready to fight again. But as the mystery deepens, there may be one more threat that lies behind the Forerunner. R


NH3: A brand new story is a brand new start…unless its an effing sequel

NH3: A brand new story is a brand new start…unless its an effing sequel! This is the continuation to Flood of Regret, so enjoy! If you want to understand where I'm starting from, compare the date with the last date from the story.

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**NAME: **Nicolas Hornyak

**AGE: **26

**SPECIES: **Sangheili

**RANK: **Maven

**STATUS: **Stationed at Cairo Station, ONI Wings

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**1200 hours, September 17, 2553 (Adopted Sangheili Time), **_**Cairo Station, **_**Orbiting Earth, ONI Wings**

Nico sighed. Another long day that was only half over. At this point, it had been a month since he realized why he preferred fighting to a valuable job like this. Still, it was out of his hands. _Predicted Miracle_ had been heavily damaged, and he couldn't be given another ship under the circumstances. Nico only had the ONI position Lord Hood had offered him several months ago. While his rank was now equal to the Arbiter's, the Arbiter still had the seniority, and also the options. Ironically, he couldn't give Nico another position in his fleet; the war had begun a mob of soldier applications, and they had to fit them in.

The Sangheili laid back in his chair, drinking a sweet drink the humans called 'soda'. He began recalling the events that happened. It was already beginning to fade. Nico briefly wondered why the Flood couldn't fade instead.

It was the first battle of a war that was far from expected. As the Forerunner Dreadnought tore through the fleet, dozens of ships exploded in fire, blue or red. The beam had missed the flagship Nico was on, but the explosions did more to the _Predicted Miracle_ than anything else. The ship had only barely escaped—actually, it didn't escape. The Slipspace jump tore it in half by the time it reached Sangheilos. It had to be towed to the shipyards.

A battle that cost hundreds of lives was the last thing expected. And the shocking part was that Forerunners had done it! Of all the things, they had, even after the Flood had been wiped from the galaxy. And Nico was considered an expert on the Forerunner, so it meant far too much work at ONI.

Nico had determined the threat level already, course the higher-ups kept demanding more. He knew that they were facing incredible odds; the Forerunners held a technological tier above the Covenant. Their Slipspace understanding was to be reckoned with, the weapons were superior, but the scariest thing was their biological abilities. They could create or find another Flood type species.

Nico finished his drink after thinking of all this and returning to work, which basically meant writing a lot of papers.

"Artemis, do you have the scans?" Nico asked into the air of his office.

"Yes, Nico," a voice responded. It was his personal AI. It was an oddity among the AI community. Artemis took on two forms, a boy and a girl. It's voice was layered which each gender also. It was adapt at information gathering, which ultimately meant it was one of the best hacking programs as well.

The AI appeared in the room center, projected at human height from the glass floor, which showed a complex network of crystal designs that was actually a series of projectors. ONI was always trying out new things, and the office with the holographic projector floor Nico had was one of them. The Sangheili didn't mind it much, but it would give the feeling of walking on air sometimes. And Nico wasn't too fond of heights.

"Good," Nico responded, standing up and clicking a few buttons. The scan assembled itself above the floor, showing his staff. The Forerunner language was highlighted on it. Nico still remembered the poem on his staff, so it could help decipher more of the language. He wished they just had Ironic Originality, but he had gone rogue and disappeared after the Forerunner resurfaced. "Based on symbols for words, right?"

"Yes, Nico. The Forerunner language follows that. However, its more complicated then that. From the poem you gave us, we can now determine that the words are placed differently then in our languages," Artemis said.

"One small discovery," Nico muttered, circling around the scans. Power systems revealed themselves, showing how the Forerunner blades worked. "And one step closer to discovering the secrets behind those beams." Nico finished, smiling for the first time that day. He was finally beginning to wake up.

"There's something else."

"What?"

"The microcomputer inside is calculating the quantum physics that make the blades." Artemis said, waving its hands out and splitting the scan, showing the equations. "It's Slipspace."

"Are you saying this staff is a Slipspace artifact of the Forerunners?!" Nico yelled, surprised at the discovery.

"Possibly."

Nico began pacing around the room. If the staff had such design, then who knew what the Forerunners could do if they entered ground combat with them?

The computer beeped on Nico's desk. It was ignored for a bit, before Nico finally stopped pacing and sat down. The message notification system blinked on his screen. Nico entered all of his passwords and opened the file. It was a voice message from a certain shipyard master.

"_Predicted Miracle's _repairs have been completed."

Nico was out of the room in three seconds flat, carrying the crystal memory with Artemis in his hand. He began to whistle, a rare trait for Sangheili with their mouths. He arrived at his room and grabbed his suitcase. It had already been arranged so that the moment the ship was ready, Nico would head straight back to shipboard duty, no questions asked. As he was putting things into the suitcase, Nico looked at some armor hanging on the wall.

It was the first thing he scanned after the war started and he had been assigned to his position. It was Forerunner in origin. In fact, it had actually been from Earth's Forerunner Ring Launching Station deep in the core. The armor was very strong, and it was one massive computer as well. Nico had piloted a Forerunner ship with it once. The fate of that ship was that its remote processes were activated by the Forerunners and brought back to their world, dubbed Fortress by humans.

Nico sighed as he walked over and folded the armor at its cracks into a more transportable form. It meant two things to him. One was that he hadn't worn armor in too long, and two; he hadn't used his telepathic powers since the Battle of the Flood of Regret. Nico's mind fight with Regret wasn't something he wanted to remember, nor risk again. But he now feared that it wouldn't be long before he had to use them again.

The Sangheili finished packing his belonging and went to the computer, typing in a message to Lord Hood. It said this:

I need immediate transport to Sangheilos. Got anything like that?

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NH3: To all who wanted to see a more detailed description of the first battle in this new war, sorry, I don't have a description for you. With these stories, I figure it seems more fitting to start further into the future and just explain things throughout the story.

To those who want a random disclaimer

RANDOM DISCLAIMER: I do not own my own dignity, sanity, or things that look like tennis balls.

To all who seem to need a disclaimer

DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything relating to the Halo franchise. Bungie does. I'd give you a link, but if you didn't know the site, you probably wouldn't be reading these things.

If you still don't know the site, there is a little thing called "Google". It's the latest fad.


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